A PSYCHOANALYTIC ANALYSIS OF REQUIEM FOR A DREAM BY DARREN ARONOFSKY

Requiem for a Dream, as a twenty-first century film demonstrating how addiction can introduce itself to people as the bridge between them and their dreams and the destroyer of them both at the same time, encompasses several significant psychoanalytic facts discovered and developed by two pioneers of the field, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Through a clear representation of the sad, naïve, and unrealistic dreams that cause addiction the movie shows not only the disastrous consequences of drug addiction, but also the psychological origins for that. Using psychoanalytic criticism, this paper intends to analyze the sources of addiction in the main characters based on pleasure principle theory introduced by Freud and objet petit a in Lacan's theory. Also, the representation of defense mechanisms in each character's behavior will be looked upon in this study. Through this research it can be concluded that following their lack of control over the urges derived by pleasure principle and objet petit a each character seeks different solutions to feel the temporary satisfaction caused by drug abuse leading them to even worse situations; therefore, in addition to drugs and addiction they use rationalization, dissociation, compartmentalization and other psychoanalytical defense mechanisms to reach that satisfaction even though they are aware of its momentary nature.

Keywords:

Requiem for a Dream , psychoanalysis , drug addiction , pleasure principle , objet petita